Somebody asked me whether indyhippo was a publisher, or a game dev group, or a source of advice for designers etc., and my response to him could I think serve as a mission statement, so here it is:

The indyhippo community started as a place to dump info about my GIPs, but then I thought why not make it open to everyone to join in, talk about gaming, talk about their own projects (if they're fellow designers), and generally hang out?

indyhippo itself has a similar ethos: I aim for it to be not merely a publishing imprint and outlet for my games, but also a focus of innovative and socially conscious game design, similar in its perspective to that of other designers such as Avery Mcdaldno.

The tagline of this community - working on something different - is related to the overall indyhippo motto, saying something different, i.e. thinking outside the box, mixing things up a bit, not simply churning out endless micro variations of previous games, which is what I see a lot of around me.

So I want to encourage other designers to think ouside the box, to provide a space where they can share ideas and get support, and possibly even collaborate with each other. You'll see in the intro section that I acknowldedge that a game is never the result of only one person's efforts, but rather an agglomeration of the contributions of many different folks.

I also want to encourage 'open source' game design, or design by forum, where external contributions to a project are invited and made welcome right from the start.